Thursday 2 December 2010

Bill Vanstone

The priest I mentioned in my last post was W H Vanstone, author of three wonderful books. As a girl I lived on a new housing estate in Rochdale before any churches had been built. We watched the church hall being built with interest and finally its incumbent arrived. He was then in his early 30s and was quite athletic having played football for a team in Bradford. (I think)
There was no church, just the hall which was very basic and Bill had a room in it containing a bed, a desk and hundreds of books. He lived there for several years whilst we raised the money to build a church and a vicarage.
On Sunday there were three sittings at Sunday school, hundreds of children arrived and I taught in all of them and then  on Sunday evening there was Evensong followed by the Youth club. This was in fact a very rowdy game of basket ball. Bill would tuck up his cassock and play...hard, if you got tackled by him  the wind was knocked out of you. After the game came the talk and the debate. It was these evenings when our minds were being opened, we were encouraged to think and to argue our case if necessary. It was no holds barred.
I was not a boy so I was banned from the choir so sometimes I went to the Methodists down the road to sing which meant that Bill then organised joint services for us.
As part of our fund raising we all did little jobs which  he paid us for.
My job was to deal with all his paper work in the course of which I found all the offers of jobs, lecture tours, visits to the states. To all of them I was instructed to just say no.
Bill's books are scholarly and erudite.  But he was not. His sense of humour was formidable. His sermons, no more then 10 minutes always made us laugh at some point. He was warm and supportive and he stayed a friend until he got sick and died.
After my husband died my vicar was a women and I told Bill how very good she had been and he said that he knew there was a place for them in the church now that was the nearest he ever came to saying it was Ok.  I hope that he approves now and that from his saintly stall he can look down and be aware of the good he did for us all as well as for me.   I light candles for him very regularly still.

4 comments:

sue aston said...

Hi Jean, this is a lovely story. Thank you for sharing. Sue Aston (nr Penzance)

Anonymous said...

Bill conducted my pre-deaconing retreat in 1976. Brilliant man. Alas St Thomas's is a shadow of its former self - but Bill's memory is still a living presence there. The hall has gone now - replaced by care home for the elderly. The present priest in charge is a woman - Sue Morgan, as was the previous priest, who has now retired but still lives in Kirkholt. I'm not far away in Milnrow.

Robin Usher

John H said...

Thanks for this. Good to be able to get more of a picture of Revd Vanstone. Just been checking out St Thomas's on Google Street View, too: is reminiscent (in its setting and its reflection of its era) of the last C of E church of which I was a member, which was also a 1960s building on a post-war council estate (albeit probably of a different "churchmanship").

Compare and contrast: St Thomas' Kirkholt; St Barnabas' Cray.

Hard not to feel nostalgic for that post-war atmosphere of optimism in the church, that deep connection with the wider society.

Anonymous said...

Jean, thanks so much for writing this. Lovely to read and to know your lively experience with WH Vanstone. From your office/secretarial work, do you know the time period when he was at Union Theological Seminary in New York? I think it was 1947 or 48, perhaps to 49, before his first parish in 1950.
Thanks, Patricia